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Fests, sing-alongs and visits with Santa to make the Elgin-area holiday season merry

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Entertainment, Topics Of Interest on December 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Dickens in Dundee is an annual holiday event that will be held Dec. 6 and 7 in East Dundee and West Dundee. | Village of East Dundee

By Mike Danahey | Elgin Courier-News

Holly Days in downtown Elgin may be kicking off the holiday calendar with a slew of activities for Small Business Saturday, but there are plenty of other events in the area designed to put you in a festive frame of mind.

Here’s a list of some of them:

Friday, Dec. 5

Dickens in Dundee will take place from 3 to 9 p.m. in the downtown districts of East Dundee and West Dundee. The free event will feature an East Side market in East Dundee, tree lighting ceremonies and visits with Santa in both towns, decorated “living” windows, a raffle to benefit Shop With A Cop, carriage rides and other attractions. For more information, go to dickensindundee.org and eastdundee.net/things_to_do/village_community_events/dickens_in_dundee.php.

Saturday, Dec. 6

Dickens in Dundee continues from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at various locations in West Dundee. Attractions include a bake sale, craft bazaar, a reading of “A Christmas Carol” and, in Grafelman Park, a Winter Wonderland with an appearance by Santa and the Lions Club tree sale. For details, go to dickensindundee.org.

Winterfest begins at 9 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 21 at Randall Oaks Zoo, 1180 N. Randall Road, West Dundee. The fest will feature Santa visits, bonfires, holiday lights and decorations. Regular admission rates apply. For information, go to www.dtpd.org/winterfest.

Riverside Parade of Lights will step off at 6:30 p.m. along the Fox River in West Dundee, crossing the Main Street bridge in Carpentersville then heading south toward downtown East Dundee. For information, go to business.nkcchamber.com/events/Details/4th-annual-riverside-parade-of-lights-1523078?sourceTypeId=Website.

Friday, Dec. 12

Dundee Township Park District will host a “Jolly Stop” from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Adult Activities Center at the Rakow Center, 665 Barrington Ave, Carpentersville. The evening will feature visits with Santa. Registration for children ages 2 to 12 is required and the cost is $6 for Dundee Township resident families and $9 for nonresident families. To register, go to www.dtpd.org/jolly-stop.

Under the Streetlamp’s “Hip to the Holidays” concert will be presented Dec. 12 at Elgin Community College’s Blizzard Theater. | Josh Rzepka

Under the Streetlamp’s “Hip to the Holidays” concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Blizzard Theater, Building H, Elgin Community College, 1700 Spartan Drive. The act is made up of former “Jersey Boys” cast members who will put their twist to holiday standards. Tickets are $65, $20 and free for children 12 or younger. For tickets and more information, go to eccartscenter.org/tickets/eventdetails.aspx#event-26CSUS.

Saturday, Dec. 13

Free visits with Santa will be held from 10 a.m. to noon for children and families and from 1 to 3 p.m. for people and pets at Platt Hill Nursery, 2400 Randall Road, Carpentersville. For more information, call 847-428-6767.

Find more here.

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Editorial: Support the shops that support Illinois

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Economy, OP/Ed, Topics Of Interest on November 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Katie Anderson-Tedder and her three children, Arthur Tedder, 5, Georgia Tedder, 7, and Grand Tedder, 3, leave Anderson’s Candy Shop in Barrington on Nov. 26, 2025. Anderson-Tedder is co-owner of the candy shop, which has been in her family for four generations. | Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

Nestled in the back of a cottage in the hamlet of Richmond, Illinois, just minutes from the Wisconsin border, is a room dedicated solely to chocolate.

In this special place, on stone slabs, generations of skilled artisans hand-dip the good stuff, creating confections that rival the finest gourmet candies just about anywhere. Customers come back year after year not just for sweets, but for the feeling that some things still run on care and quality rather than volume.

Anderson’s Candy Shop has been around for more than 100 years. The business, first located on Armitage Avenue in Chicago, moved roughly 60 miles north to a popular tourist route on the way to Lake Geneva and other cheesehead holiday spots.

Katie Anderson-Tedder is the fourth generation to run the shop, which also has a smaller location in suburban Barrington. She juggles life with three kids alongside running the business and makes it look easy.

These days, it’s anything but simple.

Anderson told us this holiday season feels unusual. On the one hand, prices are high everywhere and consumers are feeling the pinch. Sure, folks are still shopping, but the average spend per customer is expected to drop 10% year over year this holiday season, according to Deloitte’s 2025 Holiday Retail Survey. Shoppers are seeking deals and discounts in the expectation that the economy is going to weaken, and even Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending is projected to decline after four years of growth, according to Deloitte.

Arthur Tedder, 5, hands a package to Xander Novak, left, as Tedder and his mom, Katie Anderson-Tedder, and his siblings arrive at the family’s candy shop, Anderson’s Candy Shop in Barrington on Nov. 26, 2025. Anderson-Tedder is co-owner of the candy shop, which has been in her family for four generations. | Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune

Yet while Anderson knows shoppers are being more frugal, she hopes there might be a silver lining for smaller shops.

Read more here.

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‘Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ will broadcast live from downtown Chicago this year

Posted in Chicago Tribune, County, Dumb Bunny, Politics, Unions on November 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

New Year’s Eve fireworks explode over the Chicago River on Jan. 1, 2024, in Chicago. | Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune

By Doug George | Chicago Tribune

Chicago will join Times Square on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” this year, with Chicago’s New Year’s Eve celebrations televised for the first time on the ABC broadcast.

An hour after the ball drops in New York, the show will add a Central Time zone midnight countdown live from downtown Chicago, according to an announcement Monday from ABC and Dick Clark Productions.

Hosts and musical guests in Chicago have yet to be announced, but the show expects to televise the fireworks on the bridges over the Chicago River. A spokesperson for Dick Clark Productions said the program was working with local ABC station WLS-TV and Mayor Brandon (“Dumb Bunny”) Johnson’s office to make it happen.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the beauty and dynamism of our city and its people for the world to see,” Johnson said in part in a statement. “We could not be more excited to welcome in the new year with fireworks, music, and Chicago pride.”

Read more here.

Editorial note: The perfect storm: Fireworks, inebriated crowds, a demoralized police force and a national audience to witness what ensues.

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Editorial: Illinois pats itself on the back for better student performance — after lowering education standards

Posted in Barrington Education Association, Chicago Tribune, Deception, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Ethics, Illinois Federation of Teachers, OP/Ed, Perjury, Politics, Property Taxes, School Districts, Springfield, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on November 3, 2025| 1 Comment »

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

The state of Illinois released new student performance data the day before Halloween, touting better reading and math proficiency and a higher graduation rate.

What state officials didn’t emphasize is that this year’s “improvements” come with a big asterisk. Illinois changed how it defines “proficiency,” lowering the bar for what counts as meeting expectations.

Earlier this year, the Illinois State Board of Education voted to lower the proficiency “cut scores” for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, the standardized test taken by students in grades 3–8. Officials said the old thresholds were too high and unfair to students.

The new system, they argued, offers a more “realistic” snapshot of how kids are doing. But that change also makes it nearly impossible to compare new scores to previous years. The state’s online Report Card still includes the historical data in a separate area, but what’s being lost is honesty in presentation.

For years, Illinois has struggled to reconcile high academic expectations with persistently low proficiency rates. After the pandemic, scores cratered and never fully rebounded. The new cut scores reflect a broader debate over whether to meet students where they are or to hold firm on rigorous standards. Lowering expectations may make test results look better on paper, but it does nothing to raise real performance.

For parents, these changes aren’t academic — they shape how families understand whether their children are actually on track. A report card should be a clear window into student achievement, not a fogged-up mirror.

And even under the new, easier benchmarks, the picture isn’t rosy.

Read more here.

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How to stay informed without being consumed

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Letters to the Editor, News Media, OP/Ed on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Suburbanites riding the commuter train to and from their jobs in Chicago read the newspaper on April 28, 1970. | Alton Kaste/Chicago Tribune

By Kellie Walenciak | Posted in the Chicago Tribune

My father had a simple ritual. At 6 a.m., he would read the New York Post and Daily News cover to cover. At 6 p.m., he tuned into the evening news — an hour of straightforward reporting, not commentary. He formed his own opinions, and then he moved on. The news didn’t dominate company picnics or poker nights with the neighbors. A staunch Republican, he didn’t shun his Democratic relatives in Scranton. He stayed informed without being consumed.

That balance feels almost quaint today.

Instead of a daily digest, Americans now live inside a 24/7 outrage machine. We spend an average of two hours and 24 minutes on social media every day, check our phones 159 times a day and will collectively log 4 trillion hours online this year. Nearly half of us say we now watch more user-generated content than TV or streaming. Information is available and, quite frankly, unavoidable.

The results are corrosive. Every story is framed as existential, and every disagreement is a loyalty test. Unlike my father’s poker table, where the stakes were bragging rights and a few bucks, today’s debates play out before an invisible audience of strangers in all caps and fury. In the 1970s and ’80s, Dad didn’t have to choose between competing realities. Everyone argued from the same facts. Today, news is no longer a shared resource but a marketplace of outrage: 24-hour cable channels fighting for loyalty and algorithms on Facebook, X and TikTok feeding us headlines designed to reinforce what we already believe. It feels like information, but it’s really affirmation. And the more affirmation we consume, the less empathy we extend.

That distortion has real-world costs. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox urged Americans to “log off, turn off, touch grass. Hug a family member.” He said it after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated and the U.S. recorded its 45th school shooting of the year. The juxtaposition was hard to miss: Online talk of civil war collides with headlines of real violence. And yet, in the communities where we actually live, most Americans behave very differently than our feeds would suggest.

At a Mets game I attended this summer, thousands of fans of every background and political persuasion stood together to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” In my neighborhood, many are MAGA supporters. We don’t pretend otherwise, but our daily conversations are about work, tennis, children, and who’s bringing dessert to the holiday party. When my husband had COVID-19, one of those neighbors — a Donald Trump voter — was the first to text and check in. When my mother-in-law was sick, another ran down to sit with her while we were out. These are not the actions of enemies on the brink of civil war.

That disconnect — between the civility of daily life and the hostility of digital life — tells us more about warped incentives than it does about the character of the country. Social media platforms don’t profit when we feel at ease with one another. They profit when we fight.

Of course, none of this is an argument for ignorance. Democracy requires informed citizens, and there are moments when it is irresponsible to look away. But being informed is not the same thing as being consumed. And right now, we are confusing one for the other.

So what’s the alternative? I call it the 6 o’clock rule — my father’s discipline, adapted for a digital age:

  • Time-box your news. Get what you need once or twice a day. No alerts. No midnight doomscroll.
  • Cross-check. Read one outlet you’re inclined to agree with, one you’re not and one that gives you just the facts.
  • No comments. Learn; don’t perform. Resist the temptation to treat every headline as a personal referendum.
  • Skip the algorithm. Buy a local newspaper. Algorithms reward outrage. A print paper, or even its website, forces you outside your echo chamber.
  • Model it for your kids. Children learn media habits by imitation. Set shared house rules (no screens at meals, charge phones outside bedrooms) and narrate your own cross-checking so they can copy it.

It sounds small, but it’s not. After a month of following this rule, my screen time was down by a third. I still knew what mattered, but I also got back into reading for fun, started biking and, ironically, felt more informed and more hopeful.

Democracy depends on informed citizens, not exhausted ones. We need the discipline to step back if we want a country that looks more like our neighborhoods than our newsfeeds. The 6 o’clock rule is a good place to start.

Kellie Walenciak is the chief of global marketing and communications for Televerde.

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McDonald’s supports 67,000 jobs in Illinois. Why is Chicago making it hard on businesses?

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Cook, County, Dumb and Dumber, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Letters to the Editor, Overhead, Politics, Preckwinkle's Rules of Order, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Springfield, Taxes, Unions on October 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

People walk in Chicago’s downtown on May 2, 2022. Chicago has seen a mass exodus of large companies and now is experiencing a high vacancy rate in office buildings. | Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune

By Jon Banner | Published in the Chicago Tribune

We often hear Illinois leaders speak about making the state a magnet for business, but unfortunately, their policy choices tell a different story. By putting new burdens on the companies that fuel the state’s economy, Illinois policymakers are putting the future of our great state at risk.

It could not come at a worse time. In recent years, Chicago has seen a mass exodus of large companies and now is experiencing a 25% vacancy rate in office buildings. Job growth for 2025 ranks 48th in the nation, and Moody’s reported recently that the state has already slipped into recession.

The way Illinois’ leaders are turning away from its business community is a deeply troubling break from the past. For nearly 70 years, McDonald’s has been proud to call Illinois home. From our roots in Des Plaines to our move downtown in 2018, we’ve invested in this state and this city because we believe in its potential. More importantly, because we believe in its people. Across Illinois, McDonald’s creates tens of thousands of jobs, partners with local organizations, and provides employees with the opportunity to further their educations and careers. McDonald’s supports more than 67,000 jobs in Illinois and contributes more than $5.2 billion to the state’s gross domestic product.

This is a moment to consider new approaches to keep and attract companies, and yet lawmakers are doubling down on the policies and politics that will hamstring our economy. Earlier this year, lawmakers in Springfield passed a $55 billion budget that included a last-minute expansion of corporate taxes aimed squarely at global companies headquartered in Illinois. This measure taxes profits that multinational companies make overseas — profits not earned in Illinois but taxed by the state solely because of the address of a company’s headquarters.

Now, the mayor of Chicago is threatening additional taxes in an attempt to plug a billion-dollar budget deficit, most recently a plan called a “head tax,” which would levy more than $250 per employee per year on companies with at least 100 employees. Some have argued that this plan merely reinstates a prior head tax that was eliminated a decade ago. It’s important to remember, though, that the prior tax was $4 per employee per month, and even at that low level, the tax was reversed because of how much it punished the businesses that were successfully creating jobs for the state.

The stated justification for these proposals is that multinational companies will receive tax breaks from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That is false. The act changes many things, but it does not change tax rates for multinational companies.

The mayor characterized his tax plan as “pro-business” because the proceeds will purportedly be used for public safety. We strongly support increasing support for law enforcement, which is why our company was a leadership donor behind the Civic Committee’s $100 million investment to fight crime. Between the taxes we pay and the voluntary donations we make, McDonald’s already invests millions each year into public safety for the city of Chicago.

To be clear, this is not about skirting responsibility or asking for special treatment. McDonald’s pays taxes in every state and every country where we operate. But the proposals being made in Springfield and Chicago are making Illinois an outlier — one of the few places choosing to disincentivize growth by targeting its most globally competitive and recognized companies.

Aside from the unprecedented and punitive measures themselves, what’s most concerning is the way leaders are shutting out companies that have long bolstered Illinois’ economy. Rather than include the business community in discussions about solutions, we have been blindsided by backroom political deals. Rather than being engaged as a cherished community asset and a force for economic development, large businesses like ours are too often demonized by local leaders.

By targeting long-standing economic partners as a means of scoring short-term political points, these tax proposals only hurt communities in Illinois. If implemented, they would mean fewer jobs across the state. They would mean fewer investments in the communities in which we live, work and serve.

Gov. JB Pritzker has been a strong ally to the business community, and we’ve applauded his ambitious agenda to foster business growth. However, if implemented, these policies would undermine his plans and reinforce the stubborn external perception that an Illinois address is a business liability. The governor cannot be the sole champion for business; he needs partnership from the state legislature and city of Chicago.

We’ve been part of this state’s legacy of innovation and resilience for decades, and Illinois has been part of McDonald’s story since the beginning. But long-term success requires long-term thinking and genuine collaboration. Ultimately, corporations have a choice of where they are headquartered. I hope state and city lawmakers will rethink their approach to partnership with policies that reward investment in Illinois and Chicago — not drive it away.

Jon Banner serves as McDonald’s Corp.’s executive vice president and global chief impact officer. He oversees the government relations, public policy, communications, sustainability and social impact, global security, inclusion, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities teams.

Source

Related: “Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposes $21 per employee corporate ‘head tax’,” “Lawmakers push DoorDash, Uber Eats delivery tax statewide for Chicago transit,” “DoorDash, Uber, Ticketmaster and toll road hikes: $1.5 billion in potential taxes explained,” “Without reforms, pension insolvency will eat Chicago alive,” “Illinois taxpayers each owe $38,800 for state’s unpaid bills”

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Editorial: Chicago budget should not cut mounted police nor sell off their horses

Posted in Animal Welfare, Chicago Tribune, Dumb and Dumber, OP/Ed, Politics, Preckwinkle's Rules of Order on October 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Chicago Police Department’s mounted unit takes part in Chicago’s Columbus Day parade along State Street on Oct. 13, 2025. | Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune

Is Chicago really going to sell off Ella French’s horse?

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

As Mayor Brandon Johnson prepares to give his budget address Thursday, one idea should get tossed aside: eliminating Chicago’s mounted police unit.

We make this argument with the full knowledge that Johnson must close a projected $1.15 billion deficit. And we’ve said many times that Chicago’s fiscal woes stem less from a lack of revenue than from a chronic inability to control spending.

But Chicagoans tell us they want to see investments in public safety. A little goodwill doesn’t hurt, either, and that’s one of the main functions of the mounted police.

In August, Johnson’s Chicago Financial Future Task Force recommended disbanding the mounted police unit and selling off the horses.

That’s a bad idea, and we doubt it’d gain support in the City Council. We’re not sure if it’ll find its way into the mayor’s budget proposal, but we sure hope not.

“If there’s any discussion of getting rid of the CPD mounted unit, I will raise hell,” Ald. Matt O’Shea told us, and he added that the idea of selling the horses is especially absurd.

“You don’t sell an old horse,” he said, noting some of the horses were donated, not bought, to begin with.

Officers Maria Kuc and Syed Kazmi wash and brush horses on Feb. 6, 2025, in the Chicago Police Department’s mounted unit stables at the South Shore Cultural Center. | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune

Operating under the Special Functions division of the Chicago Police Department at a cost of about $2.7 million, the Mounted Patrol Unit patrols parks, the Loop, the lakefront and major shopping districts — providing visibility, deterrence and mobility where foot or vehicle patrols fall short. It also plays a major role in crowd management at large events, such as parades, protests and festivals, allowing officers to have better views above the crowd to spot potential trouble.

Read more here.

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Don’t let deer destroy your garden

Posted in Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago Tribune, Topics Of Interest on October 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Surround a small tree with a 6-foot-tall barrier of hardware wire mesh supported by fence posts. | RJ Carlson/Chicago Botanic Garden

By Tim Johnson | Published in the Chicago Tribune

I just moved from Arizona to this area, and a neighbor advised me that deer were a problem in the neighborhood and that I need to protect my plants from them. What does this mean?

— Sasha Black, Northbrook

Deer can do a lot of damage to area gardens from feeding during the growing season and rubbing trunks in the fall. I live in Highland Park with a fenced backyard, and I had a significant buck rub on a clump-form serviceberry about four years ago. If your home is near a forest preserve or other open green space, your chances of having issues with deer will be greater. Try spraying a repellent on any plants you observe being browsed during the growing season. Any damage you see may also be caused by rabbits, which have been a significant problem for many gardeners this year. I have seen several perennial gardens completely eaten by rabbits this summer. This can be incredibly frustrating for anyone tending a garden.

Garden staff has begun installing tree protection for deer rubs, and we recommend you do the same if you have any young, smooth-barked trees. Bucks can cause significant damage to young trees in the fall by rubbing their antlers on trunks. Male deer do this to clean their antlers of summer velvet from early September through November while also marking their territory during the breeding season. The first week of September is a good time to install deer protection. Bucks may repeatedly strike trees for the noise effect, showing dominance and intimidating other bucks. They coat the twigs and bark with scent from glands in their faces and underbodies to mark their territory. Trees that are 1 to 12 inches in diameter with smooth bark — like maples, lindens, birches, and magnolias — are most likely to be damaged by deer rubs. Larger trees with smooth bark as well as clump-form trees can also be damaged. Unfortunately, buck territories currently include many home gardens with young trees.

The damage to trees from buck rubs comes from the shredding of bark from a foot or so above the ground up to 3 to 5 feet up the trunk. Young trees have very thin bark that offers no protection from such damage. Usually, the damage is done over a 24-hour period. The tree’s vascular system — which is just below the bark and transports water, nutrients and food between the roots and leaves — gets damaged and the underlying wood is exposed. If rubbed all the way around, the trunk can be effectively girdled, which can lead to the eventual death of the tree in one to three years. If the damage is mostly located vertically on the trunk and does not go all around the trunk, the tree can survive, although it may die on the side where the damage occurred.

Protect the trunks of your trees from the ground to about 6 feet up the trunk. Wrapping with burlap or paper tree wrap does not provide enough protection for deer rubs, but it can provide some protection from rodents feeding on the lower trunk in the winter. Try wrapping your tree trunks with a sturdy wire mesh available at hardware stores. Use zip ties to secure the wire mesh around the trunk of the tree. Chicken wire usually works too, although I have heard about nearby gardens where aggressive deer tore chicken wire off the tree and left significant damage to the bark. There are plastic tree wraps that should also work. Surround a small tree with a 6-foot-tall barrier of hardware wire mesh supported by fence posts if you are unable to wrap the trunk. Deer repellant is not usually effective in controlling buck rubs. You need to get a sturdy physical barrier around the trunks of your trees to prevent damage from buck rubs.

Trees can heal after a surprisingly large amount of damage. Trim off any loose, shredded bark where it’s not connected tightly to the trunk. If possible, cut the wounds into an elliptical or football shape to help the tree recover more quickly, but do not dramatically enlarge the wound to do this. There is no need to use wound dressing or to wrap the damage. Smooth edges heal better than the ragged edges left from the deer rubbing. Prune back broken branches as needed. Small clump-form trees can be ruined if too many branches are broken.
Deer will browse yews and arborvitae, so you may need to protect these plants up to about 6 feet too, as deer can ruin them over the course of winter. Chicken wire or a plastic garden netting works for this, and the netting is usually easier to apply.

For more plant advice, contact the Plant Information Service at the Chicago Botanic Garden at plantinfo@chicagobotanic.org. Tim Johnson is senior director of horticulture at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

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Editorial: We strongly support this bipartisan plan to fix Illinois’ broken state elections

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Deception, Elections, Ethics, Fat Bastard, Look For The Union Label, OP/Ed, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, The Chicago Way, Topics Of Interest, Unions on October 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

People gather where former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley met for a Fair Maps Illinois panel discussion on Aug. 19, 2025. |Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

Illinois elections are broken — with roughly half of legislative races uncontested after politicians drew maps to lock in power. Now, two political veterans, one a Democrat and one a Republican, think they’ve found a way to fix it.

One is Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman from 1995 to 2008 and transportation secretary under President Barack Obama. The other is Bill Daley, son of former Mayor Richard J. Daley and commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton as well as chief of staff for Obama. The two met with the editorial board Sept. 23 to talk about gerrymandering and what to do about it. They sit on different sides of the aisle politically, but they’ve come together for a cause that’s bigger than partisan politics — they’re fighting a pernicious problem that has sapped the health of democracy here in Illinois and likely will worsen matters if nothing changes.

We support them in that fight.

Scott Stantis editorial cartoon for Sun, Oct 5, 2025, on gerrymandering reform. | Scott Stantis/For the Chicago Tribune

Last Sunday, in the first part of this two-part editorial, we wrote that in Illinois, the most urgent threat to democracy is the state of play before votes even are cast — political maps drawn deliberately to disenfranchise voters. Unlike congressional maps, which are about federal representation, state legislative maps have a direct impact on who ends up writing Illinois laws and controlling the state budget.

We understand that the national contest over bare-knuckled gerrymandering is one in which Illinois Democrats never would unilaterally disarm, and that’s understandable. We’re focused squarely on the maps that determine who governs the state of Illinois. And right now, the system allows the party in power in Springfield to draw districts to maximize its advantage. Voters don’t choose their politicians; politicians choose their voters.

It’s a reality everyone acknowledges, yet it continues to defy repeated attempts at fixing. On the campaign trail in 2018, Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the practice and vowed to veto an unfair map, but he quickly broke that promise once in office.

So how to change this sorry record of futility?

Daley and LaHood think they’ve cracked the code. And they want to take the issue to voters in November 2026 in the form of an amendment to the state’s constitution.

Read more here.

Related: “Editorial: With mostly powerless voters, Illinois democracy hangs by an elongated thread”

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Editorial: Is ‘exclusive inventory’ a new way for real estate agents to keep commissions high?

Posted in Chicago Tribune, OP/Ed, Real Estate on September 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The @properties Christie’s International Real Estate headquarters is seen in Chicago on March 20, 2025. The company was sold to Compass in January. Compass Inc. announced on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Anywhere Real Estate for around $1.6 billion. | Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune

Compass is swallowing @properties, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and others. Reason to worry.

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

Rent a car from Avis, Budget or Payless and you are doing business with the same holding company. Same with Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty. Real estate brokerages are going the same way. So when Compass Inc. announced on Monday, the New York Times reported, that it had agreed to acquire Anywhere Real Estate for around $1.6 billion in a deal likely to close in 2026, the amount of competition in the Chicagoland real estate industry was set to shrink exponentially.

Anywhere is the parent company of such familiar local names as Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Jameson Sotheby’s International Real Estate and Corcoran. Meanwhile, Compass now owns @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, itself a product of a purchase.

Such is life, you might say. But close observers of this industry see something beyond the usual push for market share that drives consolidations in all industries. Compass is known for its focus on “exclusive inventory,” meaning homes and apartments that have not yet appeared on the traditional Multiple Listing Service or MLS. Or on Zillow, the free-to-enter online site where many look for homes for sale or to determine the likely selling price of one they already own.

Generally, those homes and apartments do show up on the MLS a week or two later, but that’s if they are not already sold. Especially when the inventory is as low as is the case in Chicago and its suburbs, a savvy buyer of real estate knows that you have to keep a close eye on new listings if you want to beat the competition to an especially desirable home or one that is notably underpriced. The situation is analogous to going to an estate sale. Arrive midmorning and you’ll find dealers took all the good stuff while you still were having breakfast.

This all is great for Compass, since exclusive listings surely will help it attract and retain agents and keep commissions in house. It’s also great for Compass agents, since they can tell potential clients that only if they hire them will they get access to fresh, off-market listings. Snooze until they’re on Zillow, they can say, and you’ll lose.

Read on here.

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